With that issue in mind, Docker this week acquired Koality, a provider of continuous integration software that makes it simpler to manage the application development and upgrade processes in Docker container environments.

David Messina, vice president of enterprise marketing, says the Koality software will be integrated into Docker Hub Enterprise, the management framework that Docker has created to manage its containers. Aimed primarily at on-premise deployments of Docker, Messina says that over time Docker Hub Enterprise and Docker Hub, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application that Docker also makes available for managing containers, will together provide a federated framework for managing Docker containers wherever they happen to be running.

All in all, the management tools that are available for Docker container environments are maturing fairly rapidly as a broad number initiatives start to coalesce into larger management frameworks that will be required to make Docker containers a core part of an enterprise IT environment.